Telecommunication service providers face growing demands from customers, both in regard to capacity and features offered. This is especially true for start up companies, who anticipate much growth in demand. One method of dealing with growth of demand is to anticipate the growth by purchasing vendor equipment having bandwidth capacity and features which are not yet needed or which the service provider will not yet offer. As demand increases, the telecommunication nodes will already have the extra features and excess capacity to accommodate the growth in demand.
When providing special event services (such as video-on-demand or special internet engagements) or variable bit rate service (such as for packet processed voice or video, or email services), the capacity required by a telecommunication node is not constant. Service providers address this issue by estimating usage demand using traffic engineering analysis. The goal is to maximize usage of available capacity in order to minimize operational costs for the services offered.
However, this requires that a service provider invest much money in equipment that will not be used to full capacity for a long time. This is expensive for the service provider. The expense may be so great that a business considering entering the telecommunications business may not do so due to the large initial capital expense, thereby depriving equipment vendors of potential business.
A service provider may avoid a large initial capital expense by purchasing vendor equipment having only as much bandwidth capacity and features as will initially be offered to customers. As demand grows, equipment can be replaced by purchasing new hardware having greater capacity and features. However this is also expensive, both in terms of purchasing equipment and in terms of configuring the new equipment. It may also be difficult to switch traffic to the new equipment in a hitless manner. Upgrading equipment to versions offering greater capacity or additional features also requires equipment vendors to manufacture and support a range of telecommunications equipment. Replacement of equipment, even if only of line cards, requires a technician to visit the telecommunication node. This often requires the equipment vendor to provide a technician to visit a service provider's site in order to replace the equipment.
A method of allowing service providers to upgrade capacity and features on telecommunication nodes without requiring replacement of hardware would allow equipment vendors to offer relatively inexpensive telecommunication equipment to service providers who did not need a full capacity or feature-supported system. It would also allow service providers to expand service relatively inexpensively.